Category: Cooking

So you’re not up for cooking for your Super Bowl party: That’s okay. Cooking’s not for everyone. Don’t let anyone shame you! You have tons of other-people-who-know-exactly-what-they’re-doing-make-it-for-you options, including: • The Fully Inflated 2-Foot-Long Grinder and more from John Sundstrom’s very tasty new Slab Sandwiches + Pie • Great-sounding Filipino food from the pop-up Food and Sh*t • Reportedly…

With the big game right around the corner, we invited Boston Globe food editor Sheryl Julian to tell us how the food scene in Boston reflects the local culture there. Our food writer, Bethany Jean Clement, gave her take on the same subject for Seattle, which will run in the Globe. A taste of New England…

We’re talking turkey right here, in a live chat on all things Thanksgiving with the new Seattle Times food writer, Bethany Jean Clement. To brine or not to brine? Stuffing vs. dressing? Pumpkin pie or apple pie? (Why not both?) Why don’t we just eat out? We’ll cover it all, and whatever else you want to…

You can make these Skillet classics, kale salad and poutine, at home. Photo by Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times

Our happy hour last week was Skillet in all of its gluttonous bacon- jam-burger-and-poutine-glory. Have you been? If not, here’s your chance to sample Skillet’s greatest hits – bacon jam burger, poutine, kale Caesar and fried chicken – in one sitting. All their classics are now offered in smaller portions during happy hour.

Or maybe you’re not the barhopping type. Well, we have some Skillet recipes to try at home – its kale Caesar, arguably Seattle’s most famous kale dish and its spin on the poutine. Enjoy.

Rachelle, Sarah and Tony of Team Falkor with me, tasting pasta with jam sauce.

According to E!Online, the internet has been inundated this week with “thousands of people around the world forming teams of 15 and performing weird, random and fun tasks in the name of breaking some Guinness World Records…and donating tens of thousands of dollars to the charity Random Acts.” You don’t have to tell me.

Who better to pen a he-man kitchen how-to than prolific grillmaster Steven Raichlen, the author of 30 cookbooks including “Planet Barbecue!” and the host of “Primal Grill” and “Barbecue University” on PBS.

The hefty, illustrated Workman paperback promises “culinary literacy for men.” Writing with dry humor and a straightforward style, Raichlen comes across as a wise and knowing high school coach, friendly but firm, making it clear when rules are rules (safe food-handling procedures) and when you can bend them (Crazy Salad).

Monday is the late Nora Ephron’s birthday. Most locals know her from “Sleepless in Seattle,” but true Ephron fans know she’s more than just a chick-flick director and screenwriter. Of her many talents, she was also a great cook and party host.
In her honor, we’re posting her favorite party dip, which happens to be the crab recipe of Seattle’s Tom Douglas.

To Ruhlman, the egg is “a lens through which to view the entire craft of cooking,” a continuum stretching from baking to frying to clarifying a consommé to shaking up a gin fizz.

When it comes to the kitchen, “If you understand everything there is to know about the egg, you increase your skills tenfold,” he explained on a recent pre-Easter visit to Seattle, when we asked him to cook with us.

Even casual bakers know there is a poetry to making pie, but Kate Lebo goes beyond that.

Lebo, a Seattle-based author, both creates pies and uses them as her muse. She teaches both baking and writing, sometimes mixing the two.

Why pie? You might as well ask, why poems? With writing as well as with a crust, she said, “you know it’s done by looking at it.” And an envelope of dough which conceals its insides, “a secret waiting to be told,” doesn’t sound so different whether she’s talking about lemon meringue or lines between hardcovers.

About us

Bethany Jean Clement is The Seattle Times food writer. Her writing has also appeared in Best Food Writing, Food & Wine, Gourmet.com, Beard House, Town & Country, Edible Seattle, The Stranger and more. Follow her on Twitter: @BJeanClement.